11.55am:Nick Clegg and David Cameron seem to love to surround themselves with members of the public for Q&A sessions selling the government's economic message, and Clegg has another one today, starting at midday in Croydon.

It's fair to say that Cameron is a bit better at these events than his deputy PM. Cameron has taken to power like a duck to water, and genuinely seems to enjoy having it out with the voters, almost in the manner of a royal meeting some slightly discontented subjects. Clegg seems less comfortable in such a setting, and initially seemed more cautious, even dull, in his answers, falling back on trite statements of government policy, since any departure from coalition orthodoxy would be gleefully written up by people like me as a split or rebellion.

A recent Q&A event in Newcastle, however, saw him become rather too interesting for his own good, losing his temper with a questioner who asked: "I'm just wondering how you intend to persuade future Liberal Democrat voters to vote for you at the next election now that you are part of a coalition that's seemingly on an ideological crusade to attack the weakest in society and make them pay for the decisions and greed of those at the top in the last 10 years or so?"

Do I accept your characterisation? It is totally and utterly misleading. I think it is wrong. I think there is no evidence to the case.

Two days later, in Bristol, he was rather short-tempered again with a man who asked: "Given the lack of a mandate currently, what justifies your rather brutal social policies, your tax rises? All the while you are protecting your own job under the guise of electoral reform."

"Thanks for such a helpful question," Clegg replied. "You've obviously got an axe to grind."

Clegg has been "holding the fort" for a couple of weeks while Cameron has been on holiday, and can perhaps expect to do so for a bit longer now the Camerons' second daughter has been born – although Downing Street were being cagey this morning about whether the prime minister's holiday was going to be followed by paternity leave. Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader and the voice of his party's left, has caused Clegg some trouble, and polls have shown the Lib Dems' poll ratings falling; on the other side of the ledger, Clegg made a well-received speech about improving social mobility, although analysis showing that the coalition's June budget disproportionately affected the poor raised questions about how current Tory-Lib Dem policies will affect such mobility.

Clegg will be taking questions from midday and I'll be covering it live here.

12.04pm: Clegg has started speaking.

12.05pm: Clegg is asked about animal rights, the abuse of animals in bloodsports and factory farming, and whether Britain should adopt a vegetarian diet to combat global warming.

Clegg says he grew up in the countryside and understands people's passion for animals. He says the government is "completely dedicated to animal welfare".

He says he has been arguing in favour of new rules to minimise animal testing.

12.09pm: Clegg is asked about his position on tuition fees; the Lib Dem opposition to these was formerly one of their most distinctive policies.

Clegg says:

We've got a commitment to look at this whole thing ... We're committed to looking at all of this, making sure our universities continue to be world-beating universities ... and we do it in a way that encourages young people from all backgrounds to go into higher education if that is what they want.

He mentions the upcoming Lord Browne report into student financing, and says when that is published "we'll look at that and we'll come up with some ideas".

He says the government needs to look at how graduates make a contribution "and I think everyone agrees they should make some contribution" and how this is done as fairly as possible – "not in a way that discourages you from going to university in the first place".

Hey says his party had been against fees because he felt they discouraged people from going to university.

Next Clegg is asked about the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent, opposition to which was another key former Lib Dem policy.

Clegg says: "What I argued in opposition is that we should be looking at alternatives for the like for like replacement of Trident. In our coalition agreement it says the Lib Dems will continue to argue for alternatives ... rather than just saying you need to write out a cheque for the existing system."

He says "the government as a whole is committed to seeing a replacement for the nuclear deterrent" but Trident is "included in the mix" of George Osborne's spending review. "Trident will have to argue its case like everything else ... We're discussing this right now in government – you won't have that much longer to wait."

Asked if it is fair he is currently the most powerful man in Britain when his party came third at the election, he says: "I'm holding the fort – this is the euphemism we use."

Photograph: BBC News

12.17pm: On the IFS report that called the June budget "regressive" he says the thinktank is ignoring "all the budgets we're going to have" in the next few years. "We've got a really ambitious set of ideas about how to get people off benefits and into work ... That doesn't show up in their analysis."

But he agrees the government needs to prove it is making cuts "as fairly as possible", and mentions the levy on the banks and the raising of the income tax threshold.

"It's not easy and I'm not pretending there aren't going to be controversial decisions." He claims some of the Labour leadership candidates are saying you can do this "painlessly".

He says: "You need to get the banks lending," but, like Cameron when he speaks on this subject, has no practical proposals for this: "We're working really hard with the banks to try to sort that out."

12.25pm: He says the coalition will be judged in five years' time at the next election by graduates "leaving college with hope in your hearts knowing there are jobs to go to".

12.26pm: On tax he says the government's overall philosophy is to keep the tax system simple. "It's become unbelievably complex." He says they want to "bear down" on tax avoidance and tax evasion. And he wants businesses to know there's a "stable, simple tax regime".

12.28pm: A Lib Dem member asks how the government is going to fulfil the Lib Dems' pre-election policy of an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Clegg says:

If you want Lib Dem policies to be implemented 100% in full, you need to vote for a 100% Lib Dem government. That is self-evidently not what happened [at the last election]. This [the coalition] is a compromise ... We've all had to make compromises about things we care about.

He says the key thing is to restore public faith in the immigration system. But he admits coalition policy "doesn't include the plan we talked about in opposition on what you call regularisation ... It was not something we could include in the coalition agreement."

12.32pm: Discussing Labour's record, he asks how "we had all that money" going into education, and in terms of social mobility "barely nothing changed".

Our approach is to give teachers and headteachers a greater say in how they teach, he says, and to allocate more money to children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, something which he says the government will announce at the time of the October spending review. He is referring to the Lib Dem policy of a "pupil premium".

12.35pm: Clegg is asked if the current government is trying to phase out police community support officers. Clegg says:

There's no plan to phase out PCSOs in the way that you describe. We've got a dilemma... The economy's just gone smaller. I think sometimes people don't understand.

Photograph: BBC News

And when it gets smaller, there's less money, he says, illustrating his point with some slightly patronising hand gestures.

He talks about lessening the administrative burden on police officers. "On the actual numbers, that's just not been decided yet."

12.38pm: Clegg is asked his opinion on faith schools, but unfortunately the news channels cut away at this point.

12.41pm: What struck me about that Q&A session is how little empathy Clegg showed towards questioners who supported policies which, until recently, had been Lib Dem linchpins. On tuition fees, Trident, and immigration, Clegg seemed reconciled to the fact that, to make the coalition work, compromise was necessary, and these Lib Dem policies would probably be casualties of that. There was no sense that he was fighting hard from within the government to have these positions adopted. If I were a Lib Dem voter, I think I would feel a bit disheartened that my leader was not sticking up a bit more for the things I'd voted for.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies' report on the June budget is really quite damning for the Lib Dems, confirming as it did suspicions that the party would be unable to moderate the Tories' regressive instincts. Clegg's answers on this subject today were not really credible. How could the IFS have taken into account measures that have not been announced yet, or – in the case of welfare reform – still seem to be the subject of dispute between George Osborne's Treasury and Iain Duncan Smith's Department for Work and Pensions? How could it take into account "future budgets"?

And he was really quite patronising when talking to the police community support officer about how "the economy's just gone smaller". That's a side to him I hadn't seen before; during the election campaign he had a good conversational style with members of the public.